

OUR MISSION
Empower underserved inner-city youth and engage the community through the outdoors.

OUR GOALS
Provide affordable/accessible outdoor opportunities to underprivileged and underrepresented youth and families.


ABOUT
The Heights Urban Empowerment (THUE) is a Latino-led organization working towards breaking barriers in the outdoors and offering opportunities to underserved communities in New York City.
Our focus is to offer a specialized outdoor youth program called the Urban Outdoor Adventurers NYC that engages youth ages 11 - 17 years old who reside in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx. The program provides accessible and affordable outdoor recreational activities that focus on personal and physical development. Connecting underrepresented youth to the wilderness and build hard and soft skills in a safe and inclusive environment.
We also offer a Community Empowerment Program that hosts a variety of community events and workshops in collaboration with other community organizations and businesses of Northern Manhattan and the Bronx.
OUR STORY
The organization was founded by Antonio Camacho and Lizzette Perez in 2016 and established in Washington Heights, New York.
Seeing the challenges that many immigrants families with first-generation American children faced where extracurricular activities were expensive and/or not available in their neighborhood.
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Through a combination of 25 years of experience working and mentoring youth through various youth programs, Antonio Camacho and Lizzette Perez made a commitment to providing affordable and accessible outdoor recreational activities, increasing wilderness exposure to youth, and increasing the representation of Latinx in the outdoors.
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